Palestinian policeman reacts as rescue workers search for victims under the rubble of a house, which witnesses said was destroyed in an Israeli air strike that killed three senior Hamas military commanders, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

Palestinian policeman reacts as rescue workers search for victims under the rubble of a house, which witnesses said was destroyed in an Israeli air strike that killed three senior Hamas military commanders, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. (Reuters)

Palestinians watch as rescue workers search for victims under the rubble of a house, which witnesses said was destroyed in an air strike that killed three senior Hamas military commanders, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

Palestinians watch as rescue workers search for victims under the rubble of a house, which witnesses said was destroyed in an air strike that killed three senior Hamas military commanders, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. (Reuters)

Israeli air strikes shook Gaza every few minutes on Wednesday and Thursday, and militants kept up rocket fire in Israel's heartland. An Israeli air strike killed seven Palestinian civilians, including five children, in the largest death toll from a single attack since the start of a three-day offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Residents and medical officials said an Israeli air strike bombed at least two houses in a densely populated area near Khan Younis while residents were asleep.

Bodies were pulled out of rubble from three or four homes including neighboring structures, and the Palestinian Health Ministry said five of the dead were children. Another 16 people were also wounded in the attack, the ministry said.

The attack raised the death toll to 60 Palestinians, most of them civilians, since Tuesday, in Israel's offensive aimed at halting rocket fire at the Jewish state from coastal Gaza.

Israel says gunmen have fired more than 200 rockets at it during the campaign, striking deep into the country's heartland. The rockets have caused no serious casualties, but the barrages have paralyzed business in southern communities, with hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for shelter.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strike and fatalities, which occurred shortly after Israeli media said 30 rockets had been launched in the space of an hour at southern Israeli towns and cities. No injuries were reported in those attacks.

Below, Dudecicle mentions something very important. The mention that three israeli were living illegally in the West bank. Now, coincide that with the israeli army knowing they were missing within hours. What does that tell anyone with a brain? The three were spies. The evidence is clear cut-...

Earlier Wednesday, Missiles from Israel's Iron Dome defense system shot into the sky to intercept rockets launched, for the second straight day, at Tel Aviv, the country's commercial capital. Some were also aimed at Israel's Dimona nuclear plant, 50 miles from Gaza, but were either shot down or landed in open country.

With cries of "Allahu akbar" (God is great), Palestinians in the Gaza Strip cheered as rockets streaked overhead toward Israel, in attacks that could provide a popularity boost for Islamist Hamas, whose rift with neighboring Egypt's military-backed government has deepened economic hardship.

Dimona, desert site of a nuclear reactor and widely assumed to have a role in atomic weaponry, was targeted by locally made M-75 long-range rockets, militants said. The Israeli army said Iron Dome shot down one and two others caused no damage - it was unclear how close they came to the town or the nuclear site.

BARRAGES

Violence building up to the most serious hostilities between Israel and Gaza militants since an eight-day war in 2012 began three weeks ago after three Jewish students were abducted in the occupied West Bank and later found killed. Last week, a teenage Palestinian was kidnapped and found killed in Jerusalem.

Cairo brokered a truce in the conflict two years ago, but the current, military government's hostility toward Islamists in general and to Hamas, which it accuses of aiding fellow militants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, could make a mediation role more difficult. Hamas denies those allegations.

Palestinian rocket barrages have sent Israelis racing for bomb shelters, with radio stations constantly interrupting broadcasts to announce where sirens have sounded. But the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange seemed untroubled, ending the day with shares slightly higher.

Israeli leaders, who seem to have wide popular support at home for the Gaza operation, have warned of a lengthy campaign and possible ground invasion of one of the world's most densely populated territories, home to nearly two million Palestinians.

"We have decided to step up even more the attacks on Hamas and terrorist organizations in Gaza," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

"The Israel Defence Forces are prepared for every option. Hamas will pay a heavy price for firing at Israeli citizens."

Netanyahu's security cabinet has already approved the potential mobilization of up to 40,000 reserve troops.

Netanyahu's office said he had discussed the situation with United Nations Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and that he would speak to other world leaders later.

Washington backed Israel's actions in Gaza, while the European Union and United Nations urged restraint on both sides. U.S. President Barack Obama, in a German newspaper article to be published on Thursday, said: "At this time of danger, everyone involved must protect the innocent and act in a sensible and measured way, not with revenge and retaliation."

Life appeared deceptively normal in Israeli cities, where shops were open and roads clogged with traffic. But questions were being asked on radio talkshows about an exit strategy and a timeframe for the offensive.

At a sidewalk cafe on a fashionable avenue in Tel Aviv, patrons seemed to take an air raid siren in their stride, staying in line for their coffee as joggers and cyclists passed.

Some 80 km away in Gaza, there were scenes outside homes hit by air strikes of panicked neighbors, including mothers clutching crying children, running into the street to escape what they feared would be another attack.

But at one convenience store, which had remained open, customer Abu Ahmed, 65, said he was pleased by the militants' resolve: "I am fine, as long as Tel Aviv is being hit," he said, as he bought cigarettes.

HOMES HIT

In an air strike on a home in the north of the Gaza Strip, a leader of the Islamic Jihad group and five of his family were killed, the Palestinian Interior Ministry said. An 80-year-old woman was killed in an Israeli attack on another target in the center of the 40-km long territory, local officials said.

A 60-year-old man and his son were also killed when two missiles hit their house in Beit Hanoun in the north.

Israeli strikes on militants' homes, local residents said, are usually preceded by either warning fire or a telephone call telling its inhabitants to flee, in an attempt by Israel to avoid civilian casualties. But such bombing sometimes injures or kills people in neighboring houses.

Abbas, who is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and entered a power-sharing arrangement with Hamas in April after years of feuding, said he had spoken to Egypt about the Gaza crisis: "This war is not against Hamas or any faction but is against the Palestinian people," the Western-backed leader said.

Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Cairo has secured closures on the Egyptian-Gaza border, increasing economic pressure on Hamas from a long-running Israeli blockade.

"Sisi stressed Egypt was interested in the safety of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and sparing this grave assault," a statement from Abbas's office said, adding that Cairo would "exert efforts to reach an immediate ceasefire".

But an Israeli minister appeared to play down any expectations that Egypt would intervene soon.

In the West Bank, about 400 Palestinian youths, chanting their support for Hamas's armed wing, threw stones at an army checkpoint. Troops responded with teargas and rubber bullets.

Israel has blamed Hamas for the killing of the three Jewish seminary students who disappeared while hitchhiking in the West Bank on June 12. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied a role.

The rocket fire from Gaza began after Israel arrested hundreds of Hamas activists in a West Bank sweep it mounted in tandem with a search for the youths, who were found dead last week. A Palestinian teen was abducted and killed in Jerusalem last Wednesday in a suspected revenge murder. Six Israelis have been arrested in that case.

While threatening an "earthquake" of escalation against Israel, Hamas said it could restore calm if Israel halted the Gaza offensive, once again committed to a 2012 ceasefire truce and freed the prisoners it detained in the West Bank last month.

Security officials say the Israeli military has discovered the bodies of three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped in the West Bank earlier this month. The bodies were found Monday near the town of Halhul, close to where the teens disappeared. (June 30)

Two cross-dressing men who were fired upon by National Security Agency police when they disobeyed orders at a heavily guarded gate had just stolen a car from a man who had picked them up and checked into a motel, police said Tuesday.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth on Tuesday criticized Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk as "irresponsible" for recently signing an open letter to the government of Iran regarding ongoing nuclear talks.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said Tuesday that he wants legislation on his desk by the end of the week to clarify that the state's new religious-freedom law does not allow discrimination against gays and lesbians.